


Never In Our Favor

by detritius



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV), Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Crossover, Gen, Minor Original Character(s), Psychological Trauma
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-18
Updated: 2016-11-18
Packaged: 2018-08-31 18:30:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8589190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/detritius/pseuds/detritius
Summary: The Targaryens have always lived in District 12, as the Lannisters have in 1, the Baratheons in 2, and so on. All these founding families served as symbols and rallying points in the failed uprising of twenty years ago. Now those who are left fight and die for the sins of their fathers.Hunger Games/Game of Thrones crossover AU, set pre-series to THG





	

**Author's Note:**

> Trying something new. This is partly based on ideas that were thrown around back when I was RPing on tumblr. I'm kind of playing fast and loose with both canons here, changing around characters' ages, for example, but trying to keep to the spirit of each of them as much as possible. Unlike most of my other fics, this is intended to be its own somewhat self-contained story, so I apologize for any slowness and expositional rambling.

"I hate them," Dany says.

Viserys freezes in the midst of tying off her braid and almost undoes ten minutes' work as his hands start to shake. "Don't say that," he says, fighting for control of his voice. "You don't know who might be listening."

She bristles, the sudden movement nearly yanking her hair out of his hands. "Why shouldn't I say it?"  
   
Viserys secures her braid before it can come to further grief and puts a warning hand on her back. Though he can't see his sister's face, he can clearly picture the fire in her eyes.

Heedless, she whirls to face him, and for a painful moment, he sees their father in the stubborn jut of her chin. "It's true," she says, her eyes daring him, "and if they think for a second that we don't --"

He grips her wrist, harder than he means to, and she gapes at him, an expression of bewildered hurt. He pulls away, ashamed, and stares down at the floor. "Don't do this. Not today."

A surprised breath forced out of him as her body collides with his, and her arms come up around his neck. He pulls her in and clasps her tight, and she clings to him so hard it hurts, his heart most of all. Face pressed to his chest, she whispers, "I just don't want them to take you."

Gently, he puts his hands on her shoulders and holds her at arms' length, makes himself look into her face. "I know," he says, and tries to smile. "At least I come back, right?"

"Not all of you." Her eyes, deep violet just like his, are steady and they see too much. He looks away. He has to. "I'm not a child anymore, Viserys. I know what it does to you. Last time, you didn't get out of bed for a week."

His voice comes from somewhere far away. "You should finish getting dressed, we'll be late." They both know it's a deflection, but it happens to be true. Dany picks up her fine new dress and disappears behind a screen, leaving him with thoughts of last year. Not last year's games, which he doesn't remember at the top of his mind, but something else he only wishes he could forget. Something she shouldn't have done, if she wasn't a child anymore, and something he shouldn't have allowed. 

The first days back were difficult, and she checked in on him when she could, brought him food a few times a day and stayed to make sure he ate it. That much was all right, sweet of her in a way that made him faintly sad, but otherwise unobjectionable. But then, at night, she came into his bed and slipped under the covers with him. In the dark, she pressed her cheek to his, and they held each other. He fell asleep to the steady sound of her breathing and woke from nightmares wrapped in her arms. As he shook or wept or tried not to scream, she stroked his hair and whispered  _it's okay, you're home, you're safe now, you're safe_ , and he pressed his face into her neck and breathed in her scent and did his best to to believe. She dried his tears when they came and stroked his face, his neck, his back. He didn't stop her as her hands stole into his shirt, her skin on his, her touch anchoring him. And it was wrong, all of it, but he was weak. He wanted it.

"Viserys, come help me with these buttons. I can't reach."

He goes to her and does as he's bid, skin on skin again. Though it's only his fingertips brushing against her back, his hands turn clumsy as he does his best not to touch her. This year, he resolves, he won't let it happen. No matter how he dreads the darkness, he'll bear it alone with a locked door between them. It was one thing when she was fourteen, not a child, maybe, but not a woman, either. And then, when she was fifteen... well, at least he could still pretend. He knew better, but in her arms, he was home, and for that, he could make himself forget. But now... her skin is so warm beneath his trembling fingers, and his breath catches in his throat. As he does up the buttons at the back of her dress, the fabric nips in at the sweet curve of her waist and stretches tight over the swell above, and he feels like he shouldn't be looking. Things can't be the way they were. She should've spent today with girls her own age, all helping each other dress, and she's too old to share his bed for sure and certain.

He fastens the last button at the tender nape of her neck and steps back from her, his hands clasping each other tight. Dany examines herself in the mirror and meets his gaze in the glass, the expression in her eyes unreadable. She turns and twirls for him, her silver hair spilling over her shoulder, her skirts settling gracefully around her. "How do I look?"

"Beautiful," he says, and tries to smile. "Come on, we have to go."

 

Ten minutes later, Viserys looks out into the crowd gathered in front of the Justice Building, seeing and trying not to see. It's the same every year, the parents with grim, set faces, the unnaturally silent children, the uniformed strangers with weapons close to hand. The sight of the Peacekeepers, so many straight from the Capitol, makes his throat close and an ugly scream build beneath his breastbone. He takes a breath and tries not to feel. _Get through this, get through this, get through this_. 

He wrenches his gaze from the armed men and tries to find his sister in the crowd. Dany's lost in the press of adolescent bodies, screened by the taller, older girls in front. The ones with the most to fear. Unwillingly, he's drawn to them, their faces. Some are forcing smiles, talking too loudly, their voices ringing hollow with bravado. Far more have their eyes averted, looking down at their hands, at the ground, hugging themselves despite the mild weather. Others are stoney-faced and still, showing nothing at all. One such girl, with dark hair and the air of the Seam about her, senses him looking and stares back in defiance. _Traitor_. She says it with her eyes. _You were one of us once. Now you're one of them_. 

A Seam girl, far too thin, her Reaping Day dress patched and faded. How many times is her name entered today? Thirty? Forty? 

She reminds him of someone he used to know. Katia, her eyes like sparks struck from stone. Seven years in the ground now.

Maybe she gets the scent of pity off him, because her hands clench and her bony face turns hard. She hates him in that moment. He can see it. Then her mouth trembles, and if he's not mistaken, hot tears well behind her eyes. And he glances down and lets her have his shame. _I'm sorry_ , he doesn't say. _They gave me no choice_. Today, anything he said would only be an insult. Sitting here on this stage, he deserves every bit of reproach the starveling girl has for him.

He turns to Jorah, seated beside him. He's walled behind his public face, somewhere between polite interest and dull-eyed resignation. Over the years, he's gotten better at hiding his thoughts, but it wasn't always so. The first time they spoke -- Viserys thinks it must have been the first time -- his eyes were bloodshot, and he smelled like he'd just crawled out of a bottle.

"I know you," he'd said, his voice thick and slurred. "Aerys's son." Then, "I'm sorry. About your brother. I did what I could for him."

Now Jorah reaches out and squeezes his shoulder, and a look passes between them. _Not much longer. Just hold on_. Not much more of this, at least, the collective indrawn breath, the palpable dread from all of District 12. Soon most of them will be home and safe, at least for another year. Just two families, or one in the cruelest of circumstances, will be splintered apart and left to grieve or pray. The children, a boy and a girl, will be given over to him, and he will do what he can. For everyone else, life will go on.

Two lives for hundreds. An acceptable sacrifice.

Over and over at Reapings and during the games themselves, the Capitol tells them to be grateful. _When you chose treason, you condemned yourselves to slavery or death. But we have chosen to be merciful. This is the legacy of the suffering you caused. Don't lament what's been taken from you. Count yourselves fortunate, and give thanks for all that we, in our benevolence, have allowed you to keep_. And grateful or not, the districts are forced to accept the Capitol's terms. They've all seen the broadcasts from the first few years, the districts that didn't obey. The third year of the games, 5 wouldn't offer up its children for the Reaping. In retaliation, the army dragged off every child they could find and killed anyone who stood in their way. District 8 only refused to recognize the Capitol's supremacy, and they were cut off from all support, starved out for months until they bent the knee. And of course, 13 resisted and payed the ultimate price. Compared to that, two children a year is nothing.

 _It didn't have to come to this_.

Every year, the thought comes back to him. No matter how he tries to bury it, it burns in his mind with the slow heat of a coal in a banked fire. They had peace here, once. Once. Until the old rebels ground it into the dust. And for what? That's the question that haunts him, even in his dreams. What did they believe they could gain?

He deserves an answer, as do all of them who were born into this mess. But there's no one left to tell. The original instigators are long dead. Viserys tries to picture them, their faces, and for no reason, it's Jorah that he sees. It's foolish -- Jorah would have been only a boy when the fighting ended, younger than Dany is now, and the first uprisings may have broken out before he was even born. He's no more to blame for the rebellion than Viserys is. But even knowing better, he can't shake the association. Something about the look of him, his careworn face and faded eyes, his once-powerful body gone to seed. He looks like every man who knows his glory days are gone.

Viserys thinks first rebels might have had that same look. He imagines them as bitter, grasping malcontents, proud old men who wanted more than they were ever meant to have, who resented the Capitol's power and thought themselves more fit to lead than strangers in a distant city. Men who believed the districts belonged to them, not to the Capitol, and not to the citizens, the ordinary people just trying to live decent lives. The cost of rebellion meant nothing to them. They rallied young hotheads with words like _liberty_ and sent them off to die. 

He hates them, he realizes, with a cold dispassion mostly foreign to him. And to his shame, he feels a creeping sympathy for the Capitol. Not the Capitol that's done so much to him and his family, but the Capitol-that-was. The Capitol before the rebellion. He knows what it is to have your life suddenly, hideously altered by forces beyond your control. When the districts rebelled, the people living in the Capitol had their futures taken from them, just as he did thirteen years ago.

Viserys was nine years old when he watched his brother die. It's the most vivid memory he has of Rhaegar now. Rhaegar fighting, falling. The massive boy from 2 swinging his hammer -- in the footage from that year's games, the commentator called it the moment a tribute becomes a victor -- Rhaegar dazed and dying, blood pouring from his mouth, as the trumpets blare.

That was the last time he saw his brother. The still, pale thing the Capitol sent back in a box wasn't Rhaegar. Viserys remembers their father, his voice rising, _That's not my son! What have you done with my son?_

"I know that look," Jorah says from beside him. "Try not to think on it. It'll grind you down."

In that moment, the anger that's been building in him focuses on Jorah. Viserys tries to fight it, but the rage doesn't answer to him, for all it lives inside his skin. It takes him by surprise, and he's overwhelmed, defenseless, his resolve drowned out by the empty roaring in his head. Waking the dragon, Father used to call it. Aerys Targaryen was always an imposing man, but when his temper came out, he was terrifying. People once said the Targaryens were descended from dragons, and seeing Father towering above him with murder in his eyes, young Viserys had believed it. 

He knows better now. A man with dragon's blood wouldn't have died the way his father did.

Besides his name, the rages are Viserys's only inheritance, but unlike some of his mythic forebears, he doesn't lose his mind entirely. The part of him still capable of reason just pulls away and watches from a distance, waiting for the hammer to fall. It's that way for him now. His body is on fire, his mind encased in ice. He understands what's going on around him -- he can see and hear with perfect clarity -- but the part of him that is still himself is dragged along by the ravening beast inhabiting his body.

"Viserys," Jorah says, and, helpless, he sees his hands reach out to throttle him.

Jorah swats his hands away and cuffs him soundly on the back of the head. "Easy, whelp," he says. The gentleness in his deep, familiar voice hurts more than the blow. 

The rage dies down as suddenly as it came on him, and the strength goes from Viserys's limbs. He feels hollowed out, and shamefully close to tears. "I'm sorry."

"I know," Jorah says. “None of us are at our best today." He reaches into a pocket and produces a battered silver flask. "I haven't touched it," he says, offering it to Viserys. "It helps just knowing it's there."

Viserys's eyes flick to the cameras being set up around the square. "I shouldn't."

Jorah follows his gaze and gives him a barely perceptible nod. "You're right." The flask disappears back into his jacket. "There'll be wine for you on the train. Better stuff than this, I expect." Viserys catches something like regret in Jorah's faded blue eyes, and wonders if he's thinking of the rich food and free-flowing spirits that would be waiting for him if he was the one on his way to the Capitol.

Hesitantly, he asks, "Do you ever think of going back?"

The look that crosses Jorah's face deepens the creases in his brow and the hollows around his eyes. For a moment, he could be one of the old rebels from years ago. "No. Not for all the luxuries in all the world."

As if in response to his words, a figure glides into view, a woman breathtaking in her decadence. She's wearing diamonds. Diamonds in a district whose most valuable asset is coal. The people of 12 part before her like winter grasses before the gleaming blade of a scythe.

"It would seem our escort has arrived," Jorah says dryly. "A new one again this year. You wouldn't know anything about that, would you?" 

12 has been assigned a different escort every year since Viserys was seventeen, mostly because he keeps sleeping with them. He tries on a suggestive grin that doesn't entirely suit him. "Is it my fault that the Capitol keeps sending such pretty people to represent our backwards little district?" Women with the delicate beauty of butterflies and men like strutting peacocks, every one of them fashionable, elegant, and empty-headed. Viserys lowers his voice and, with a glance at the cameras, cups a hand over his mouth as though he's stifling a cough. "And is it my fault they don't realize what's at stake, or don't care? My tributes need good people talking them up in the Capitol, people who know what they're doing. Not people who aren't even smart enough to be discreet about fucking one of the victors."

"You've been testing them?"

Viserys shrugs. 

Jorah gives him a long, inscrutable look. "I thought you were just gratifying yourself."

Viserys's mouth twists, but he doesn't say anything. Jorah has no way of knowing how few of his sexual encounters have anything to do with personal satisfaction.

"You'll have your work cut out for you with this one, at any rate," Jorah says. "She reminds me of my ex-wife."

"Every woman from the Capitol reminds you of your ex-wife."

Jorah scowls, but doesn't deny it. To hear him tell it, the former Mrs. Mormont was more ice sculpture than woman, beautiful and frozen inside. She hurt him so badly that he still catches glimpses of her from the corners of his eyes. Viserys thinks he understands how that must feel. For him, it isn't some lost love, but his parents and his brother who lurk just out of sight.

At least they didn't mean to leave him.

Their new escort mounts the stairs leading up to the stage, nearly blinding him as the shimmering fabric of her dress throws off spangles of reflected light. Viserys has to shield his eyes. As his vision clears enough for him to see her face, he wonders if Jorah had some insight that can't be explained away by bitterness. For all her glittering loveliness, there is something cold and immovable about her, maybe in her colorless eyes. It isn't hard to imagine her as the sort of callous socialite who puts emotions on and off in accordance with the latest fashions. But then, there's little enough Viserys wouldn't believe of the Capitol crowd. He has some bitterness of his own. 

The woman looks down her patrician nose at each of them as she passes, then sweeps on without further acknowledgement. She settles gracefully in the third of four chairs set up on the stage. Only one still stands empty. The mayor's. Just at the thought of the man, Viserys feels another white-hot surge of hate, and this time he lets it ride. Unlike Jorah, the mayor has done plenty to earn Viserys's ire. After Father's death, the Capitol sent that craven outsider to take over his position. He'd never even been to 12 before he sauntered into the mayoral mansion and threw Viserys and Dany out into the street, exiling them from the only home they'd ever known. Viserys had looked up, up, up into the man's blunt, unfeeling face and asked, "Where are we to go?"

And the brute had answered, "What do I care? Away with you!"

Viserys was nine years old then, and Dany only three. She was confused and frightened, and she kept asking for their mother. There was nothing he could say to her. All he could do was hold her, and try not to cry himself.

He'd kill the mayor with his own hands if he thought he could get away with it.

As he's thinking it, the clock strikes two and the man himself emerges from the Justice Building. Viserys has to fight down a sneer. It's a warm day, although not bad for early summer, and the mayor had been hiding out in one of the only buildings in 12 with air conditioning. He must not want the audience to see him sweat. Funny that such an ugly man should be so vain.

Viserys knows he's being petulant and doesn't care. Such pettiness may be beneath him, but it helps him keep his temper down.

The mayor clears his throat and launches into the traditional Reaping Day speech. It's the same every year, and Viserys's mind starts to wander. At the front of the crowd, the mayor's wife leans down to whisper something to their daughter. The girl is her mother in miniature, pale and delicate, with cornsilk hair. She'd be five years old now, or maybe six, and her little face is solemn as she watches the older children in the center of the square. Viserys wonders what her mother could possibly tell her to help her understand.

He was like her, once, watching Father give this same speech, cleaner and safer than most children in 12, but still all too aware of the creeping dread, the unnatural quiet of the crowd. He was around her age the first time Rhaegar's name was entered, and his mother had to hold onto him to prevent him from joining his brother in the square. Mother had been unable to explain why Rhaegar didn't get to stand with them anymore. By the time Rhaegar was seventeen, Viserys understood well enough, and all his formless fears came true when they called his brother's name.

He's brought back to the present as the mayor comes to the end of his speech. "And we are honored, as ever, to be joined by District 12's own victors, Jorah Mormont --" Jorah gets to his feet and acknowledges the scattered applause with a nod, not meeting anyone's eye. " -- and Viserys Targaryen."


End file.
